Page 108 of The Unknown Birds

He looked as though she’d slapped him.

“What can you call it but selfish? For me to prioritize my own happiness when all around us people are preparing to be torn apart? When I must ready my students to be ripped from the arms of their parents, when I must find a way to protect my mother and Frau Wintter from everything they barely survived the first time? It feels selfish indeed to think of what I want.”

“All right,” he said, nodding with quiet determination and patting her hands. “All right.”

“Please don’t be angry.” She bit her bottom lip to stop it trembling.

“I’m not angry. Perhaps I can even help. Let me walk you home.”

They sat silently on the train to Aldgate East, the picnic basket like a solid wall between them. Ash wanted to say she didn’t need an escort, but she couldn’t bear to send him away after refusing his ring.

She wanted to apologize for ruining their lovely luncheon, but she couldn’t bear to hear him tell her it was all right for a third time.

“Come in for a cup of tea?” she offered when they reached her flat, fully expecting him to decline so she could go straight to her room and sob into a pillow.

“I’d like that very much,” he said instead.

Her mother and Frau Wintter made him welcome, asking after his health and his choristers and whether he was getting enough to eat. And when they were all sat awkwardly around the table, he told them, “Actually, I’ve a proposal for you ladies, if you’ll allow me.”

Eyes wide, Ashley’s mother shot her a look.

“Not that kind of proposal mother,” she sighed, an edge of warning in her voice for Rook because she couldn’t imagine what he meant.

He raised his eyebrows and held her gaze as if to say that sort of proposal was still very much on his mind, and her stomach heated and turned somersaults to spite her.

Then he reached into his pocket, and for one brief moment she thought he was actually going to pull out the ring and ask her again in front of God and everybody so she couldn’t say no without looking most terribly cruel. Instead, he withdrew a folded piece of paper, Dear Lord, a poem or some sort of proposal speech?

“I received a letter from one Major Henry Davies. He was captain of B Company when we were in the war.”

We, her mother mouthed.

“The officer you bumped into at the seaside?” Frau Wintter asked in a tone that said she didn’t believe for one minute Ash had ever gone to Brighton.

“Mm-hmm,” Ash confirmed, as amusement glinted in Rook’s eye.

“Major Davies would have come to make this offer in person, but he’s been kept quite tied up at the Home Office of late. He’s behind the plan to evacuate city children to the country in the event of war.”

“Evacuate?” Ashley’s mother repeated. “Is he afraid they’ll send more aeroplanes this time around?”

“Yes,” Ash said emphatically. “That’s exactly what he fears.”

Her mother and Frau Wintter shared an uncomfortable look.

“To the point,” Rook said, “Major Davies is the owner of a rather grand estate in the Midlands, nearish to Wales. Having no family or heir, he has decided to open the house to some of those evacuated children.”

“How very kind.”

Ashley’s eyes shot to Rook’s. She hadn’t known this was part of the Old Man’s plan.

“Indeed. But he only has a small staff, and with all those children, he’ll need a great deal of bread and biscuits. He has an undercook who’s keen to take it on, but she hasn’t the skill nor the training. That’s where you come in, Adele.”

“How does this Major Davies know I exist?”

“I believe he tasted your Butterplätzchen somewhere in Italy, the Christmas of ’17.”

Frau Wintter turned to Ashley in amazement.

“I was taught to share.”